A Luxemburg Idyll in 
Early Iowa ' 




By WELKER GIVEN 



t_. 



Copyright 1922 / 
By Welker Given ^ 



©C1A690734 :. 



DEC -5 1922 






V. 



Tete de Mort. 



Thixt onr rich aij;riciiltnral Iowa first attracted atten- 
tion as a mining- section is as certain as it seems odd. 
Lono- l)efore the farm vahie of the i)rairies was nnderstood, 
the lead dejiosits in the pecnliar and hnn'ted section near 
Dnbnqne were song-ht. Over the river Galena became a 
llonrishing- center of snch mining- and smelting before 
Chicago amonnted to anytliing. 

The Dn1)nqne-Galena district, aronsing interest among 
lead prodncers the world over, was specially noteworthy 
in old Lnxendmrg where that indnstry has been long 
practiced. Lnxembnrgers were among the first to work 
the Galena field, also to prospect jnst over the Mississippi 
in the narrow strip of similar hills on the Iowa side. \\'est 
of the great river the pockets of lead proved rather shallow, 
Imt some prospectors who penetrated westward np a little 
valley into Iowa fonnd something else qnite as attractive 
to another class of stnrdy yet beanty loving Lnxembnrgers. 
Back to old Lnxembnrg they sent word of a snrpassing 
vallev abonnding not only in charm bnt in springs, wood 
for fnel and shelter for stock, the lack of which then kept 
the prairies of small avail for settlers. In response there 
came to early Iowa midway between Dnbncnie and Belle- 
vne a thrifty, cheery band of immigrants devoted to ]dain 
living and high sentiment who developed in scnii-secln- 
sion in the sheltered valley of 1>te de Mort wdiat J W. 
Axlward has since described as "one of the cpiaintest settle- 
ments in America", a village which a mncli nearer neigh- 
I)or. Fdi Cole of I'ellexnc, has vividly jnctnrcd as "a little 
French island in tlic American sea. the priceless gem of 
St. Donatns". 



True to ancestral custom these Liixembiirgers mined 
if not for lead for rock and built homes of Tete de Mort 
limestone. The two dozen peasant-like houses at St. 
Donatus (the one village of the Luxemburger township) 
are two story, cemented in sandy yellow outside to age 
like adobe and thus look as if centuries old, weathered like 
those in Europe. AA'ithout eaves, built mostly in l^locks 
close up to the road, sometimes with the stable under the 
same low pitched roof, they make the wondering visitor 
doubt wdiether he is still in the United States. AA'ith some 
accessories that might seem crude were they not so quaint, 
St. Donatus does not fail to display the Luxemburg taste 
for the scenic and for works of man that if humble are in 
high accord. Thus our Iowa state geologist. T. E. Savage, 
reporting on that section, had to drop for a moment the 
severe language of science to dilate on the beautiful view 
over a charming valley across the gentle Maquoketa slopes 
up to where a little chapel lifts the cross to heaven from 
the bleak Niagara crest. 

Valuing education as they did 1)eauties of nature, the 
]Tioneer Luxemburg villagers drew from old Luxemburg 
a young educator, J. IMichel Flammang, who came from 
the duchy to young Iowa eight years l)efore our civil war. 
The immigrant-educator was only twenty-eight, his charge 
for school and church was long made up of former peas- 
ants, they withstood an economic grind harder than later 
settlers knew when the railroad went with them out on 
the prairies ; but the record the little band of Luxemburg- 
ers made in the 1)eautiful but contracted valley of Tete de 
Mort was true to form. 

Tete de Mort is unic|ue. It is close to the center of 
that paradise for geologists, the narrow strip of "drift- 
less" in Iowa, exempt from the early invasions of the ice 
age. When Julien Dubuque secured his mining claim from 



the Indians forty odd years 1)efore the settlement of Iowa 
he appears to ha\e liad rather l)etter intuitions tlian some 
other Frenchmen. "Tete dc Mort."" as memorial of an 
ancient Indian battle and pile of sknlls. did not appeal to 
him in ]dnral or sing-ular; he termed the stream at his 
southern boundary Mescpiabysnontpies or Red llumming- 
Bird, as some translate it, with the darino- sugg^estion of 
tliat sylph of beauty actually in that \alle\- in Indian times. 
Anyway it is a scenic spot worthy of such a name and of the 
Luxemburg- Kasses, Kriders, Polg-ers, and dVitzes wdio 
later g-a\'e it treatment characteristic of them and appro- 
]iriate to it. 

Landscape artists say the setting of this village at the 
Western end of the township, and over three miles back 
from the Mississippi at the point where two Iowa-like 
valleys unite to form a rarer one, is what principles of 
art would dictate. The mile wide basin lies in an am- 
phitheater of two hundred foot hills with gentle slopes for 
half a mile each way, then steep, at last rugged cliffs with 
detached escarpments of Niagara limestone. As in Tom 
Moore's Avoca bright waters meet, St. Katherine's creek 
di\-iding the village and joining the Tete de Mort to make 
a farewell meander across the valley preparatory to a 
more hurried straight away four mile run in deej^ening ero- 
sion to the Mississippi. The one store, the village Idack- 
smith's shop, the two churches and the two dozen stone 
h(3uses are set just as a jiainter would want them f(^r a 
well spread picture. 

The history of Tete de Mort is as uni(|ue as its aspect. 
The young educator Micliel kdammang reached Iowa fresh 
from the educational asi)irations of Luxemburg at the time 
when liigher education for women was rising in popular 
\iew. ()ne of his great and)itions la\' that wa\' as was 
soon to appear. Promiitly .after liis arrival l-danunang in 



the fifties assisted in establishing the first rural high school 
for boys in Iowa a few miles ofi^ at Key \\^est and a later 
one he founded at the St. Donatus cross roads. Likewise 
he l)egan early to plan for a boarding school for the higher 
education of girls and actually established the first institu- 
tion of that character in Iowa in a four story l)uilding at 
this remote village where the rattle of a railroad has not 
been heard to this day. 

Father Alichel, though he long contributed to what 
was oddly called the "Luxemburg Gazette'' (published in 
Dubuc|ue) left little in print al)out his inspiration touching 
higher education of girls. Doubtless religious in the main 
and aiming at preservation of the mother tongue together 
with other inheritances from Luxemburg, it had a phase 
which seems to have been left in more formal expression 
l)y other educators of that day though they never practiced 
it as did Flammang — namely, the training of girls in a 
charmed Ruritania where nature's teachings would re- 
enforce those of the school. 

I recall a statement of that aspiration by another 
educator who probably never heard of h^lammang or St. 
Donatus. A. A. Lipscomb was an educator of an educa- 
tional family l)ut not privileged to carry out his ideas as 
did Flammang. He was a Protestant with his ancestors 
rooted in this country from Colonial times; he reflected 
the idea of pastoral surroundings for girls in formati\'e 
years from a different angle. Sixty odd years ago, how- 
ever, LipscomI) welcomed higher education for girls with 
an American desire, earnest as any of Luxemburg, that 
where possil)le it should be conducted away from the 
temptations and distractions of cit}' life. Lipscomb de- 
plored for the young girl surroundings or influences near 
or "in and for the open world with the prizes of ambition — 
social position, wealth, luxury, fashion — rendered intensely 



attractive t(^ her stimulated, feverisli heart". Instead, for 
all his advanced ideas on intellectual training of girls, 
Li])scomb was in close if unconscious line with the devotee 
oi St. Donatus when he i)raised the ideal of training for 
women "to open the mind to the inspiring gladness of 
nature, to learn the lessons of jjeauty in tlie fresh scenes 
of each recurring day, to 1)ow down ])efore the sul)limities 
of nature and be exalted l)y their i)resence ... to find and 
lav the heart close to a redeemed spot of earth and sink 
silently into a rapture of joy." 

Observe: not preparation for life but living it to the 
full. 

Modern education is not as new as it thinks with its 
vacation camps. l)oy scout tours, field trips and the like to 
enlist apperception, as they say nowadays. The Flam- 
mangs reached out for that and far more three score years 
ago — for nature's soothing and magical voices heard amid 
scenes of huml)le life, of moderate labor, small ])rofits yet 
content. 

Though painful to suggest anything Init high thinking 
in such a scene, it must be admitted rural people often 
appear dead to the beauty amid which they live. Ruskin 
savs it would seem in the Alps we should have the peace 
and fellowship of the human soul with nature, l)ut it is 
not so. The goats on tlie rocks have as nuich joy in the 
mountain beauty as the mountaineers who live there. 
Every night in cities peoj^le assemble in opera houses to 
gaze on stage scenes despicting peasants in gay ril)ands 
and white bodices, singing sweet songs and l)owing grace- 
fullv to picturesque crosses wlien in fact the Alpine peas- 
ants live in foul luits. deforming the inexin-essil)le loveli- 
ness about them with piles of refuse, ignorant of the name 
of beautv. Ruskin's exjilanation is that through the mid- 
dle ages ])eo])le of gentle natures gathered in cities to 



avoid the incessant raids and small wars of the exposed 
country while the turbulent and heavy handed remained 
where they would he suitably engaged. If there be truth 
in that it must be exaggerated. Thousands, whether rustics 
or city agnostics, who deny the subconscious, reject the 
spiritual altogether, nevertheless submerge themselves in 
it Vidien they feel what stirs within when they gaze on 
beautv in the material forms of nature. Doubtless many 
rustics have appreciated such beauty better than they can 
say. It does not always need a miracle to reveal the in- 
finite: Nature can do it for the responsive wdio walk 
humbly. 

However it may be with others, the charge of sordid 
or sodden materialism will not hold against the wakened 
and thrifty Luxemburgers. Those people have no large 
citv; rustics and villagers in Europe, fond of country pas- 
times, wedding dances and music, devoted in religion, they 
are lovers of rural beauty and the poetry and legends that 
go with it. Significant the l)attle a band of them waged 
with American pioneer materialism even when they knew 
not all they did, testing out a new education under the 
leadership of Flammang. In Tete de Mort as surely as 
in the Avoca where the l^right waters met there was a 
bloom of the valley, a crystal and a green, a soft magic 
of streamlet and hill, with a dash of bold crag not seen in 
Tom Moore's -vale together with nearly all that Goldsmith 
sang of Auburn, the loveliest village of the plain. 

Embracing and valuing nature more than the most 
advanced of today, those old educators thought to prepare 
for life by living life, they aimed to enrich youth with 
beautv not for preparation but realization, knowing spir- 
itual seed is never as well planted as with simi)le human 
life on one side and glorified nature on the other. The 
idea of IHammang especially was to hold his own Luxem- 



l)urg people in loved Tete de Mort and draw in sympathetic 
pupils from outside to remain in formative years under a 
dual influence, the lo\eliness of nature and the lowliness 
of man. 

If this high wrought purpose had an inmiediate envi- 
ronment highly fa\'orabIe. it was yet an island washed on 
many sides by the rough waves of the adxancing Amer- 
ican pioneers. 

To the query whether it made finally a successful 
resistance we must answer yes and no. 

Though from a church standpoint the results are a 
marvel to this day, most outsiders would qualify a further 
verdict. The boys' high school is now a dwelling, the 
seminary reduced to a country district school. No board- 
ing pupils have come for over forty years. 

A wanderer there today wondering at the four story 
stone seminary building in a mere handet, hardly a fourth 
l^art now in use, may sit on the stile o\'er which the girl 
boarders used to come and go in their walks, or, if more 
favored he may hnve one of the few lingering sisters show 
him the deserted but spotless dormitories, the little l)eds 
uiuised for long decades; yet though he mourn some 
halcyon days of this Ruritania, he must not fail to clind) 
the hill to the high shrine back of the waned academy, as 
both home and yisiting maids did once, to follow a path 
where the lesson has not lapsed in any degree. 

Remembering doul)tless the charmed religio-historic 
(diaple du Bildchen in (dd Luxeiuburg near X'ianden, the 
idealistic young ])riest in America established a replica 
such as is said to ])e unkn(^\\n elsewhere this side the 
Atlantic — a series of fourteen open air altar stations of 
the cross on the winding wa_\- back of church and seminarx' 
u]) the little monntain to the crowning slu-ine, "fair as a 



star w'lien only one is shining- in the sky," and visil)le in 
three valleys, each worshipper's brick alcove with pictnre. 
motto in three languages and a low l^ench for l)ent knees. 

The wayfarer must tread lightly the made-path of 
soft turf carpeting a rocky way to the Niagara shrine crest, 
once in l)leak contrast to the silver-green below, now too 
softened by evergreens. Up there he may hear the village 
blacksmith's hammer softened by distance, the cock's 
shrill clarion rendered faint, perchance drowsy tinklings 
that hill distant folds and lowing herds that wind slowly 
o'er the lea, while the nearer bells of church and school 
will certainly be sweet though no note in them or in any 
echoing horn can disturl) the educator-priest who sleeps 
with his mother by his side in the little churchyard be- 
tween his two waned schools at the foot of his stations of 
the cross where he lal)ore(l twenty-six years. 

Yet even in the l)est days at St. Donatus there were 
mischances. Thus when at one of Flammang's unique 
church celebrations, Luxeml)urg style, men \\ere firing a 
cannon near the seminary a ]:)remature explosion killed 
several and sent parts oi their bodies over the buildings, 
the roar of the gun could not have been helpful to a girl's 
school had there been no horror of death. So when a 
boarding pupil taken with an infectious disease had to be 
sent home to save the others. The country roads being 
at the time impassible for vehicles the girl was carried on 
a litter many miles to the nearest station, where, however, 
the conductor would not receive her. She died soon after 
and the railroad refused to ship the body. That was before 
the time of pul)lic regulation of railroads, when they still 
did about as they pleased. Though the girl's l^ody was 
finally taken aboard the incident certainly showed the 
necessity of having seminaries in close touch with hospi- 
tals or railroads at least. 



Some time later, but while this Luxemburg paradise 
was hardly out of the rare and rural stage, it came into 
collision with the railroad again at another angle. The 
iron horse, as the locomotive was l)reezily termed, was 
proving many w^ays hard to tame down to a gentleness 
suited to his appearance so near as the lower end of the 
idyllic valley. This steed was indeed a type of the hostile 
force spreading around and beyond Tete de Alort, of the 
ripping power that was l)reaking the stubborn glebe of the 
prairies, six or eight goaded oxen on the pull, or of the 
lumberjacks and rough necks rafting down the great river 
four miles off. 

The second time the railroad broke through the 
defense of the Rurina of the Tete de Mort it was to tempt 
some of the strong armed Imt gentle hearted Luxemburg- 
ers oft' to the rough pioneer districts to the westward, not 
to haggle over taking out a boarding pupil smitten with 
contao-ion. In the late seventies with the second generation 
in full activity and a third coming rapidly on, no Flammang 
could prevent a swarming from Tete de Mort. The 
Rurina of that valley might have held aloof from the 
breaking plows to the westward, the prairie schooners, 
the railroad gangs, the roustabouts and the lumberjacks, 
but not against the overcrowded condition of the loved 
but now too narrow valley. Yet Flammang. expostulating 
with parishioners wdio were yielding to the temptation of 
cheap and abundant tillable acres farther west, in a pro- 
testinsf farewell address, advised them when thev went 
to the nearest railway station on the Mississippi to throw 
their children into the river that their bodies and not their 
souls should be lost in the outside world. 

A\> know now Father Michel's fears were over- 
wrought. The departing young folks did not go to perdi- 
tion ; thev went where thev could raise more corn and 



10 

money but seem without doul)t to have taken their religion 
with them, developing leaders like the Rev. Joseph Tritz 
out on the stormy prairies. We need not sigh for those 
swarmers from the hive. Necessarily the materialism of 
that day cut a wide swath around and far l^eyond Tete de 
Mort, out where physical force had a great work to do in 
a short time. The ambitious young people of St. Donatus 
had to make some sacrifice to that besieging force ; the 
fears of Flammang were unjustified, — yet we hate to make 
anv concession to that other phase of nineteenth century 
practicality wdiich beguiled the boarding school pupils 
from going longer to Tete de Mort. "Insatiate archer, 
could not one suffice?" In the case of the girls the reaction 
of the materialism of the day on the spirit of the sylvan 
retreat seems more distressing, unduly extended ; the oil 
of industrialism would not mix with the waters of Luxem- 
burg idealism even for them. The typewriter was begin- 
ning to click, the voice of the telephone girl was heard in 
the land. Lovely as the scenery was at St. Donatus, unique 
the villagers, could such things develop business women? 
The call of education was back where whistles sounded 
and engine bells rang, near the marts, offices, shops, fac- 
tories. Such was the American response to the lovely 
Luxem])urg idvll of girl training in the precincts of a 
Rurina where nature was to help charm away feverish 
attractions of luxury and fashion to sul)stitute those of a 
sim])le li'fe in another sweet Auburn. Worse than the 
cannon explosion was the recall of American practicality 
as it finally penetrated to the girls' seminary in the sylvan 
retreat and condemned the four story l)uilding in the little 
hamlet to stand in part as monument to a beautiful failure. 

More than that. Flammang was wiser than he him- 
self knew. Our profoundest educators today in their 
struggle to maintain cultural studies in some just relation 



11 

to vocational can appreciate now as never l)efore such a 
loss of the aesthetic from its best place and scope, namely 
in the n])lift of a scenic environment beheld in youth 
athwart the simple life of musical and legend-loving vil- 
lagers — charms not analyzed or consciously studied but 
absorbed: as Lipscoml) said, tlie ]m]n\ bowing down to 
be exalted, a supreme lesson, taught without teaching. 

If we turn to the nati\e male youth of the valley we 
find the serpent that cre])t into their Eden carried a base 
l)all and bat. A story in ])oint tells of the introduction of 
base ball at St. Donatus. The homebred youth had plenty 
of muscle for batting and making the bases; for long they 
would persist in running on a foul. The hard thing for 
them was the change of gear to avoid waste effort and 
husband every breath of efficiency. If historians find it 
difficult to say just when decline sets in with a nation, still 
more so when it has progressed so far that recovery is 
impossible, it is not so with Tete de Mort. Considering 
not the religious spirit, still undiminished, only the romantic 
Luxemburg ideals transplanted to early Iowa, we may 
suspect the crisis was reached when baseball entered the 
bucolic valley. \\'hen the ingenuous youth of Tete de Mort 
fell to the American game and that spirit was made ruler 
over sport as over business, monarch of efficiency, punch, 
teamwork, drives and every phase of bounce. Calypso and 
her nymphs must have fled the valley as the beloved of 
the Lord fled the city on the plain. 

Anv way the fact must be faced of the Tete de M(^rt 
boys mastering base I)all after a time, for the later genera- 
tion is as capable as any on fouls and knows a deal about 
building character into salesmanshi]) and harnessing many 
kinds of energy close to production. American style. 

For all their reverence some lingering old-time laity 
tell vet sotto voce an occasional l)luff tale of Idammang as 



12 

when he awarded an inattentive altar boy a slap that sent 
the lad reeling to the floor, also his throwing l)ack to the 
pews in contempt a hard times collection that yielded only 
pennies — all apocryphal it may be bnt showing another 
facet of the recollections left by a ]iersonality decided and 
disciplinary as well as devont. 



It was not all gold at old St. Donatus nor did every- 
thing glitter there even in the palmiest days of Father 
Flammang. He must have remembered how Achilles 
stopped singing and playing his harp to put pork chops on 
to cook. For some years there were as many saloons as 
churches in Tete de Mort and they appear not to have 
been as innocent as the one at Goldsmith's Auburn where 
the maid kissed the cup l^efore it went round, for when 
Father Flammang demanded earlier closing than the law 
required he had to appear in person waving his crucifix 
and causing a wild stampede of revelers through l)ack 
doors and windows. If the old time villagers were far 
more poetic some ways than their hardheaded American 
neighbors in adjoining townships they fell short of Amer- 
ican taste in others. Perha]:)S it was because they had 
never been affected by the sight or tradition of the rock- 
hewn caverns of religion in old Luxend)urg where Druids 
once otfered firstlings of flocks in sacrifice that these 
American could make no sufficient allowance for a secular 
survival when they saw the carcass of a sheep or hog or 
quarter of a steer hung up to cool on a hook on the front 
wall of a St. Donatus dwelling right over the flower beds. 
Similar lack of misty tradition left them unappreciative 
when thev beheld high piles of manure in front of houses, 
not knowing that in some parts of Europe the size of such 
heai:)S is a peasant's higli sign of wealth. 

But such things, exaggerated perhaps, are all long 
gone even if true. The St. Donatus of today remains 



13 

picturesque in appearance l)iit only one way archaic since 
the Frerichs, Kniefs and J^>klermans have multiplied with 
the Manders, Wagners, Duponts, Franks and Kalmeses. 
The Catholic church to the north prizes a relic from 
the skeleton of the pilgrim Donatus who died over a thou- 
sand years ago, other old tokens of religion are cherished 
both sides of the valley, while the secular rude and rare of 
Flammang's time ling-er as a last rose of his summer in 
the love of a generation thrifty, practical and up to date 
as any villagers in Iowa. 

But though Father Flammang's seminary had to sus- 
pend, and his high school had to be reduced to the scope 
of an ordinary rural district school, he had other results 
that would have satisfied his masters in old Luxemburg. 
Little Tete de Alort has supplied thirteen priests to the 
Catholic church and sixty-three sisters for the veil. To 
appreciate such results from one church in a hilly towniship 
it must l)e remembered that the district has little over half 
the tillable ground of an average prairie township, with 
a like reduced wealth and population. On the same scale 
one of the smaller Iowa cities of say twenty-five thousand 
would need to have produced seven hundred ministers and 
over three thousand women of the veil if its forces were 
likewise diverted from material success to things spiritual. 
Surelv his own communion at least, if it think the old 
seminary scheme a failure, must account it a noble failure. 

1\irning to the other side of St. Donatus we find 
things less ]Mctures(pie perhaps Imt arresting. The 
Lutheran church, which is the first l)uilding passed on the 
scenic highway from the south, is an astonishing structure 
in a village or country township. In contrast one way to 
what the other old timers did across the valley, the 
Lutherans to the south show achievements that are equally 
astonishing in a situation so rural. Here, too, religion is 



u 

potent but in another phase, ^^'e are told these German 
Protestants had a chnrch there in 1918 sufficient for all 
needs, l)nt immediately after the armistice they were mov- 
ed without drive or pressure to erect this one as a thank- 
offering to the Lord for the end of the world war. More- 
over, in modern fashion it ]:)rovides for the social life of 
the people ; not omitting a thoroughly equipped kitchen, 
it registers co-operative effort so up to date as to enli\'en 
the antique individuality of the old stone dwellings below. 

This Protestant church has a site that is a picturesque 
counter])art of the Catholic one a mile away across the 
valley. The two face each other not unkindly, as if in 
noble rivalry. If tlie church to the north is unrivalled in 
the altar stations which sanctify the winding way that 
leads from it and from the old seminary up to the shrine 
on the rocky top of the little mountain, the other has for 
background a hill almost identical which, however, has 
been left unchang'ed by man, even to the slal^s of limestone 
it has cast down in ages past and the great outstanding, 
poised, challenging crag that is to crash down in some 
future century where the church now stands — a reminder 
of inevitable end ever before the living. So, too, if on 
one side of the new church the old churchyard with its 
even white stones shows in certain far lights as if a great 
flock of white swans had lighted that side of the sanctuary 
oft" on the East solemn slabs of blue-gray limestone have 
been arrested in their fall and poised 1)y nature like the 
pages of a half-oj^en Bible of stone. 

A full cup of religion is borne today l)y the excellent 
Father Vallaster and the worthy Pastor Herforth ; ])etween 
them Tete de Mort is one hundred per cent churched. No 
grave crime has ever been perpetrated in that district, 
lunacy has e\'er been as unknown as povert}'. and divorce 
remains impossible, the giant evils of modern civilization 



15 

all banned. Narrowing tlie \ lew to the civic, we have on 
t)ne side this valley, where foreign tongues were long 
almost the only speech, the patriotic thankoffering of the 
Lutheran cluirch and on the other the church school 
merged into the pul)lic, the uplifting tradition where 
l-dammang sleeps, with tlie work of the boy who carved on 
tlie door of the Franks long ago the eagle of American 
democracy destroying the serpent of foreign tyrannv. 
"Viert Juli" is not heard as frequently now, but Fourth of 
July sentiment holds both sides of the vallev. 



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